


Up And Out Of Here

by Lachecafe



Category: South Park
Genre: Aged up characters, Craig and Stan are kinda close but they are just bros for the most part, Drugs Mentioned, I only tagged the characters in the first few chapters, I was gonna put major character death but it doesnt totally apply so I decided against it, M/M, Mostly canon ones like Stan and Wendy and Token and Nichole, Other than tweek and craig there are gonna be some implied relationships, Space AU, also most characters are gonna show up eventually, its all in space too so most of the characters are alien versions of themselves, mostly with Tweak's Coffee none of the main characters will use them, nothing too graphic will happen in this, the teen and up rating is just for cussing and inappropriate language
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2018-04-17
Packaged: 2018-09-28 04:23:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 19,344
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10071329
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lachecafe/pseuds/Lachecafe
Summary: "Craig decided he wouldn't let the world outlive him, in fact, made sure he outlived the world."Join Spaceman Craig and his half-alien side-kick Tweek in their adventures through space, discovering new planets and creatures along the way!





	1. Craig's backstory

Craig's dad used to tell him that the world changes fast and the only way to survive was to keep up.

Craig's mom used to tell him that his dad was horrible at adapting.

Thomas Tucker graduated high school at age 18 in the year of 1987, instead of going to college he took up a job at his father's auto-shop. What would come to be called the Influx of Invention took place 1990; the new world came out of nowhere and the first thing to go was cars. No amount of work in those next few years could have saved the small business; 'Tucker's Auto' could not adapt from wheels to hover plates, and as one time collided with another, the business went bankrupt. Thomas was left with no job and a exhausted father.

Thomas found his way of life attacked at every corner, as he juggled constantly evolving jobs and the rising costs of his father's hospital bills. Thomas longed for stability and simplicity and yet life would rise above his capacity every second. His dad died in 1992.

Thomas met Laura Mitchel in 1993 and they married out of convenience; both were overworked and two steps away from homeless. For Laura and Thomas, complacency was a far way away, as they struggled to live in a world that has outlived them. They would promise each other they wouldn't let the same happen to their son when he was born a few years later; October 12, 2000.

Walking down the street those days may remind you more of 'Futurama' than the 'The Jetsons', depending on the area. Richer areas held shiny metallic buildings lining pristine streets; while poorer areas would look as if they were from Thomas and Laura's childhood, with slight accents of the future. For instance, in 1998 postal teleporters were made to replace mailboxes, the government required flashy boxes were found on the front yard of every house, unless its occupants were rich enough to pay for the advanced version that would teleport packages straight to your front porch; Thomas believed these to be the greatest quirk of the future, he would get giddy every time the box would light up with a package. Delivery for everything was near instant.

Laura got a stable job as a hologram telemarketer in 1999, at the world's fastest growing tech company "Up And Out Of Here"- UAOOH for short. She would advertise amazing inventions- like the Hybropill, a medication that could slow down the aging process by putting a person to sleep for set periods of time- alongside useless inventions like the "Self-Cleaning Shoe! Dirt smudges are a thing of the past!". Laura was often frustrated with this job; inventions like the Self-cleaning Shoe were required to take priority, while Hybropills were marketed as sleeping pills for the vain. After awhile she learned to hide her discontent from her customers, while projected for them she wore a bright smile on her face.

Despite her frustration, Laura assured herself that she was lucky to live in such an advanced world. Thomas however, did not believe he was lucky in the slightest.

Unable to find a stable job until 2003, he saw himself as a useless relic of a dying time, he would often pray for a natural disaster to turn the world back to how it used to be. The only job he found he qualified for was one of a Janitorial bot cleaner and repair man, in a world that had only recently evolved to have robot servants, he already found himself below them. He was deeply ashamed of his place in life at such the young age of 34, but bared through it for the sake of his now 3 year old son, Craig Tucker.

Craig decided he wouldn't let the world outlive him, in fact, he made sure he outlived the world. 

Growing up, Craig's teachers were amazed to find the offspring of two old fashioned hicks could be so brilliant. That amazement only ended when human teachers were proved inefficient in 2005 and replaced with unfeeling intelligence bots. Craig was grateful for the change, even at age 5 he found being around other people unpleasant. Craig was a very smart child but he was almost irrationally unfriendly. 

Craig went through school without a single friend, entirely out of self-isolation rather than alienation. He would childishly say to his councilors that this was in preparation for space travel but he really just wasn't interested.

Craig believes he decided the moment he saw the night sky that he wanted to leave earth. What his parents first saw as childish fascination turned to a legitimate goal. Craig spent every free moment he had researching space travel, even skipping classes to visit museums and begging his parents to take him to a space station every year for his birthday. 

Though Craig couldn’t remember what age he was exactly when he decided on this goal, he liked to tell people, “The moment I opened my eyes as a baby I wanted to get the fuck out of here.”

At age 15 he was deemed the school “Bad Boy” by his fellow classmates, despite the fact the only bad thing he’d ever done was cuss under his breath in front of a teacher. He first flipped off a girl in 10th grade when she called him “Hotter than the sun.”, responding “Bitch I’m a blue giant.” Afterwards, the middle finger became his trademark.

Unhappy with the increase of attention on him, he quite literally ‘booked’ it out of high school, graduating at age 16. He was immediately accepted into “Up And Out Of Here’s Space Training Department”, which was formed in 2014 after the obvious discovery that UAOOH’s Hybropills could be used for long distance space travel. Craig immaturely nicknamed the program “OOOOH’s STDs”, earning him a tense relationship with his much more serious peers.

He was moved into a 2 person dorm on campus, with the only other highly gifted but intolerable student on campus, his enemy; Stan Marsh.

Stan Marsh was, as Craig would put it, “A hippy, ‘all life is beautiful’ even those he’s depressed, tree fucker.” Which, however insulting, was pretty accurate.

Stan was the second child of 2 famous new age scientists, who “stopped rock extinction, or someshit, and don’t know what to do with the rest of their lives”, as Craig would say.

Despite Stan’s wealthy upbringing, he was driven to depression by his parents’ constant arguing. As he grew he developed views and beliefs drastically different from his parents’; where his parents believed in the preservation of earth through science and protests, he wanted to fight for the continued survival of the creatures on earth through space colonizing. He began training at ‘UAOOH Space Training Department” after his parents convinced him the planet’s Sun would blow up in 50 years. Craig told him that this was only “the bullshit raving of two attention starved ex-scientists”, to which Stan replied, “I guess we’ll only know in 50 years.” Even now, Craig wonders if that would have been true, had both the world and Stan survived that long.

Stan was Craig’s roommate and assigned ‘most compatible’ copilot, for when they were finally sent out. It’s safe to say Craig HATED Stan.

Stan was the polar opposite to Craig in every way that Craig could find unbearable, he couldn’t stand being around him. Stan was sociable and kind where Craig was alone and rude, Stan was a recovering alcoholic with great morals where Craig once kicked a squirrel for trying to eat food that was his off the ground. “Don’t touch that one Mr. Nut, I have a quality bowl of peanuts right here for you.”

Craig nearly gave up on his lifelong dream upon finding he would not only be training with him, but Stan would also be accompanying him into space. Craig persevered however, promising himself that, worse come to worse, he could dump Stan out the airlock once they take off and continue without him.

After only two and a half years of training, Craig and Stan were approved for space travel and prepped for their first outing. This was an incredibly fast approval and, as much as Craig hated to admit it, Stan was probably the only person in the UAOOH program capable of accomplishing it with him. Their first mission was to visit passing satellite station “BLU Alpha” and socialize with it’s occupants for a week, before returning to earth and attempting more risky assignments. 

Both Craig and Stan’s aspiration was to eventually partake in long range space travel, one of the only futuristic ambitions not yet accomplished by humanity. This mission was to be, not only their first exhibition into space, but also a test-run of Earth’s first ever long range space ship; and what was to be their permanent ship for future missions. The ship was built with all necessities of human survival and was fueled by nearly any sort of living residue; the current source of energy being a garden that the occupying astronauts could also gain nutrients from, the future source was to be the occupants of the ship's waste. Advancements in human technology also allowed the ship a complicated, space-safe restroom capable of doing this, which Craig was not looking forward to using.

Upon first seeing the ship in it’s early test stages, Craig vaguely requested the engineers add “red” to it and, while Stan stood by to ask the ship's developers about it's capabilities, he snuck in and messed with the controls. Craig ended up setting the ship's development back 2 weeks by persistently turning a lever the wrong direction while the engineers were distracted, avoiding blame by saying the ship's building crew didn't tell him he couldn't go inside and the ship's controls were outside his training.

Taking Craig's claims to heart, the engineers redid the ship's control room, adding an advanced sort of auto-pilot called R.A.D., or Robot Auto Direction, making the ship capable of literally flying itself. The impressive application made Craig's job as head pilot incredibly boring but he didn't mind, the less work he had to do the better.

Following Craig and Stan's first meeting with the ship, they had visited it many times throughout its completion, each time the hunk of metal got more and more impressive. Now as they stood in full gear on a obligatory slow-rising ramp up to it's doors, it was undeniable the machine was a technological masterpiece.

Unlike past space ships, most ships at this time were in one permanent piece and very compact. Though still tall and thin, it was smaller than Craig had imagined; he was told it only had 3 single-roomed levels; the top floor was the main control and sleep-pod room, the middle floor was the complicated restroom Craig still wasn't fond of, and the lowest floor was a combination kitchen, garden, and exercise room- called the 'Nutrition Room' for short. The outside of the ship was a solid silver color, with retractable bright red landing gear.

Craig snickers at the obvious nod in his direction from the rocket's building crew.

"You know the red will probably come off after a few weeks in space, right?" Stan inquires at him, pausing when Craig audibly groans.

"Ugh dude, come on. Just let me have this." Tapping his foot, Craig adds, "How fucking long does this ramp take to get up there, Jesus Christ."

"Unless it's some sort of embedded coloring?", Stan continues. "I'm not sure, I haven't looked into how paint peeling works in space."

Craig flips off the man next to him in response to his unwanted elaboration, the gesture having lost it's edge by Craig's drastic overuse of it, Stan didn't take it personally.

Stan does however try to cover the view of the finger from the news camera's in the distance. "Don't do that, they may reconsider sending you as the spokesman for our species when they see how rude you are. We don't want an intergalactic war on our hands after all."

Snorting, Craig lifts both his arms in the air, displaying his middle fingers to everyone in the vicinity. "Alien's won't know what this means, stupid."

Stan sighs, defeated, he couldn't stop Craig if he tried; Not only would Craig never listen to him, but, despite being 4 years older than Craig, Stan is a good half-foot shorter than him and Stan was in no way a small man. At 6.9, Craig towered over nearly everyone in the UAOOH program, his height and dark blue eyes earning him the nickname "Blue Giant". Craig found the nickname hilarious, though Stan didn't know the exact details why, he figured it had something to do with his past. 

The ramp reached it's destination after a minute of silence, the scientists doing last minute check ups on the ship came over to assist in latching on Craig and Stan's respective helmets and leading them inside. Space gear hadn't changed much over the years despite the degree everything else changed, scientists were probably too busy making space travel possible to also make fashionable space suits.

Craig hated the poofy white gear, he even requested the suit be dyed blue or anything else but the fattening color, but his request was denied. Now he was stuck looking like a human marshmallow on live television. The supply crew did however offer him a special dark blue under suit with a detachable latex cap, in order in ensure his cooperation. He accepted this brief embarrassment in exchange, only because the cap reminded him slightly of a chullo he had when he was younger, despite it missing the distinct yellow Pom-Pom that one had. He briefly considered sticking a yellow Pom-Pom to this new cap to complete it but decided against it, that would look dumb.

Always contrary to Craig, Stan kept his suits the original black and white regulation colors, instead insisting he be allowed to wear his lucky red, white, and blue beanie during take off. The request was approved, despite it being purely sentimental, because the hat wouldn't be visible under the helmet anyway.

Now hooked into their seats and awaiting final countdown, Craig groans as Stan tries to talk to him. He stares at Stan's excited face blankly through his helmet, lips moving with words he can't fucking HEAR because, and you'd think Stan would know this being his co-pilot and all, he hadn't activated the helmet COM. Without it, Stan's words were muffled through his suit beyond comprehension.

Craig turns on his COM, "God. Long distance travel with you is going to be hell." He adds a quick "Over." To his statement, letting Stan know he now has the ability to respond correctly but Craig would prefer if he didn't.

Stan flinches, embarrassed; he activates his COM awhile after, hoping the few seconds longer he waited would be enough to make Craig forget his mistake. "Sorry dude, I was just saying this is going to be really cool, over." 

"Thanks, that was really vital information I needed to know right now." Craig replies sarcastically, slightly irritated that Stan also added a 'over'. Though, knowing Stan, he probably thought the 'over' was a requirement, as opposed to the attempt at technological attitude Craig meant it as. Craig shifts to face forward, away from Stan, as another attempt to indirectly tell him he wasn't open for conversation at the moment.

"Did you know Wendy Testaburger is stationed at the satellite we're visiting?", Stan questions. After a moment of silence he decides to make the question rhetorical and continues, "I've always wanted to meet her."

Craig looks back at him pointedly, to which Stan, misunderstanding the look, adds an "Over." and grins like he thinks he did something right.

"You don't need to say-" Craig begins, only to cut himself off, that 'over' thing was starting to get on his nerves but, despite his own irritation with Stan at the moment, he figures he should show this Wendy some sympathy by breaking Stan's fixation on her before they arrived for, what would be an awkward, 7 day stay in her personal quarters.

"Dude, you know she'd be over 40 by now, whatever childhood crush you had on her should have ended 20 years ago," pausing, he adds, "and, I guarantee she won't like some guy who's young enough to be her son."

Stan's face flushes indignantly, "I don't have a crush on her! I just think she's really cool; she's like a scientist, a politician, and a athlete, dude!" His face flushes more," Plus in order for me to be young enough to be her kid, she would have had to of had me at 18, she's too smart for that dude!"

Craig snorts, "Stupid." Maybe he would tease Stan more on this subject later, but at the moment they both had a job to do. He turns forward again and focuses on his controls as the final countdown starts, his COM echoing the same robotic voice probably booming throughout the civilian crowded bay.

Craig showily flips a few switches and activates R.A.D.; Though Craig had been trained to fly the ship by himself, he saw no point in the effort when it was well able to fly on itself better than any human could. A pixelized smiley face appears on one of the three screens parallel to his controls, it's high-pitched voice chimes, "What can I do for you, sir?"

"Take off, Red.", Craig commands, linking his COM to the ship for total voice control. Craig had taken to calling R.A.D. 'Red' while still in training, which had confused the machine at first but eventually resulted in Red's preference of him over Stan, who saw Red as a tool and therefore called it by it's assigned name. Red is an AI, very capable of complex thought and emotion to better keep astronauts company in space; Therefore Craig decided to treat it as he would any other person. He elaborates on his command at Red's polite request, "Destination: Satellite BLU Alpha."

"Yes Sir." Red responds, lighting up the remaining screens by the controls with various ship schematics. "Taking off now." 

The ship began to vibrate with the pressure of its forthcoming blast off and, as the spacecraft began to lift off the ground, the shaking reached an almost excruciating intensity. Craig hears Stan coughing though his COM, muffling words that Craig guesses probably went along the lines of, "I don't feel good." Stan had a track record of inconveniently sudden nausea bursts, usually either fading as soon as they come or ending in unfortunate vomit spills for the janitorial bots to clean up.

"Don't puke." Craig replies, shifting into a more comfortable position on his seat, "If you do you'll have to sit in it the whole ride up." Now that the ship was on course, it would take an hour or two to get to their destination, unfortunately for Stan the two astronauts were not permitted to move around the ship while in course. Stan starts to look green, so Craig grants him a bit more incentive, "You don't want ~Wendy~ to see you all gross do you?"

Craig snickers when Stan frantically shakes his head at the emphasis on 'Wendy'. All humor aside, Stan really did look sick. Craig almost feels sorry for him but decides no amount of half-assed sympathy he could give would help in this situation anyway; The only thing he could do was postpone the mission and if he postponed the mission Craig would be putting his childhood dream on hold. There was no way Craig was gonna risk himself for somebody else. Nope, Stan is just gonna have to meet his old lady crush covered in puke.

Craig subtly adjusts himself to watch Stan without him knowing, he always wanted to see what throwing up in a space suit would look like. He bets the entire front of Stan's helmet will splatter with half digested vegetables, assuming Stan's a vegetarian along with his hippy status. He's never seen the guy eat anything but gross smoothies and raw vegetables, so he figures it a pretty fair assumption. After an hour and a half of boredom and no longer subtle staring at his sick co-pilot, Red informs the two that they have arrived at "Satellite BLU Alpha", the machine's weird halting robot voice putting a grateful stop to the unpleasant silence that had filled the control room. Craig, slightly disappointed that Stan didn't puke the whole way up- apart from a few close calls, commands Red to begin boarding preparations while he manually maneuvers the two spacecrafts together. With the ships successfully connected, he dares a look back at Stan, who- unsurprisingly- looks like a complete mess; Green, sweaty, and doubled over. It now occurs to Craig that Stan may not be just nauseous-sick, in fact there was a chance he was also dying-sick.

"Good job Stan, now my entire day is ruined." Craig jokingly chastises him, though Stan wouldn't understand why. "How're you feeling?"

Stan responds accordingly, gagging halfway through, "I'm okay." And, after recovering, switching to "I'm not okay." Craig sighs and unbuckles himself, he is probably going to help Stan into the Satellite. Red announces a moment too late that the ship has turned off artificial gravity for the boarding process, as Craig floats out of his seat. He stretches out in the weightless feeling, back at the station anti-gravity training was alway his favorite. He briefly considers fooling around in this state but decides against it when Stan COMs him for help. "Uh, Craig? Can you help me into the- the satellite? I don't th-think I can move?" The sick man following the request with gross retching, Craig unenthusiastically moves to moves to help him. Unbuckling his co-pilot and lifting him from his armpits, Craig is grateful that at least carrying Stan would be easier without gravity; The guy was bulky as shit. 

With Stan situated under his arm, Craig approaches the loading dock doors and taps a small square screen to the side of the entry way. A cheery middle aged woman appears in the box in painfully low resolution. "Hello! Welcome to the BLU Alpha Satellite Station! Congratulations on getting this far in the program, we understand this is your first mission, so we would like to offer you the utmost hospitality! We- What's wrong with that guy?", the blond stopped mid regulation greeting to stare at Stan's hunched figure in horror. Craig couldn't blame her, Stan looked like a corpse at the moment.

"He got sick on the way up, you gonna let us in or not, Chatty Cathy?", Craig impatiently responds. He wants to get away from his sick partner as soon as possible, catching whatever he has would ruin the entire trip. It wasn't like he had a reason to care about what this space woman thought of him anyway, and it was safe to assume Stan wouldn't either; Craig didn't know exactly what Wendy Testaburger looked like but he vaguely remembered her having long black hair and he knew she would be a lot older than the blond woman greeting them. 

"It's Annie", the woman corrects him. He sees her blurry frame turn to mess with things out of view from the square she was displayed in, after a few clicks and WRRRRs, the door slid open to reveal Annie in full resolution on the other side. Annie stares sympathetically at Stan's pathetic form briefly before gravitating to the side. Craig takes this as permission to float in, Stan tucked under his arm in a mutely humiliating way, after allowing them to pass Annie returns to the door to shut it. 

Another apparent inhabitant of the satellite appears with his hand outstretched, a man who, despite looking slightly younger than the blond woman, had unfortunate balding brown hair. Craig unceremoniously tosses Stan at the man, "He's probably dying, you should get him out of that suit, like, now."

The unfortunate man hurriedly complies with Craig's request as Craig starts to remove his own space suit, letting the pieces float away carelessly; It felt good to be free. Craig smooths out his non-regulation blue under suit, already feeling slightly superior to the space veterans around him as a result of the unique color. To his previous dismay, he could not persuade his supply crew back at the station to rid the outfit of its regulation white stripes at the suit's neck, cuffs, waist, and ankles along with the original color, but he found conciliation that his cap at least was pure. He releases the fasten at the neck of his cap, letting the sides fall to frame his face casually. He briefly feels nostalgic, wearing his cap like this made him think back to his childhood; Sporting his favorite blue chullo underneath a pretend helmet and running around town playing like the snowy tundra was an alien planet. 

He forces down the good memories of earth, he's planning on leaving earth forever one day so homesickness will only complicate things. The balding guy leads Stan to float beside him in fetal position, then floating away in a way, Craig figures, may be too careless; Stan still looks sick, leaving him like this is just asking for trouble. Annie and the balding man now stand 3 feet in front of them, framing a mature dark haired woman, it seemed they were trying to properly greet the two newcomers. Craig swears the additional woman must have teleported there, he didn't see her enter and there was no blind spots in this room for her to have been standing in, as far as he could see. Craig leans to Stan and whispers,"Has she been there the whole time?" 

Stan groans and looks around, he immediately recognizes what Craig meant, his eyes go wide when he sees the new woman. He chokes and gulps heavily, Adam's apple bobbing. "We-Wendy, I've-", he once again swallows down what Craig guesses is bile and attempts to continue. The next moment he opens his mouth however, green chunks flood out instead of words, puke gathering in a comically large mass between Stan and the three older astronauts.

Craig can't help but break out laughing as the satellite inhabitants rush to contain the puke and escort Stan's mortified form off to whatever medical room they had in this space craft. From the heavily digested carrots and broccoli occupying Stan's puke, Craig determines Stan is a vegetarian.


	2. Craig's loss and Red's determination

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Craig couldn’t help but mourn for his dead planet every waking moment, which is probably why he would stay asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not updating for so long, I lost inspiration briefly.  
> This chapter has a bit of a time skip be warned.

Craig couldn’t help but mourn for his dead planet every waking moment, which is probably why he would stay asleep. 

This remorse did not derive from the loss of his species. Not for the 4 or 5 people he cared most about on earth. Not the people he had thrown away in a split second decision he had no choice but to make. Or so he likes to believe because, as you must have seen, Craig likes to think he couldn’t care less about the majority of anything. 

To Craig, neither of these things stemmed his remorse because no matter who the human was, in the moment, he could see them as nothing but a single piece of a 7 billion piece puzzle. What Craig felt remorse for, floating out in endless space by himself, wasn’t about who he left, but how his planet would soon be forgotten forever. All it’s history, all its knowledge, everything, now only exist in his mind. 

Craig had been the only survivor thanks to nothing but dumb luck and Wendy Testaburger’s quick thinking. He still wasn’t sure what exactly happened back then but he could guess it was some sort of virus. She had tossed Craig out of the satellite immediately after Stan’s sickness traveled to the other members of her crew, telling him to “fly away as far as he can and not look back”.

Unfortunately he had looked back out his ship’s small porthole, only to see the entirety of Earth’s blue and green surface covered in smoke, dark cracks showing through that looked to be the planet falling apart. BLU Alpha floating around it, ironically just as peacefully as it had been before. Though he knew it wasn’t on the inside; After they first arrived, Stan was taken to the satellites medical room and was diagnosed by Wendy to have, what they thought, was Swine flu. Annie and Jason seemed to have gone mad from whatever Stan brought up with him; It started with puking, like Stan had first, and then foaming at the mouth and attacking everything that moved. Despite hosting the disease, Stan himself remained sickly and nearly comatose.

Craig had tried to radio him, as he stared out at his dying planet, knowing well enough he wouldn’t be heard. The action bringing him only the sound of static and a desperate voice he realized was his own, he shut off the radio and stared at the reflection of his own face in the glass. It seemed unfamiliar, contorted in more emotions he had allowed himself to show in his lifetime. After watching his planet disappear into the distance, his mind had been in a state of a sort of desperate emptiness, a distressing desolation that left him unable to think of any sort of future or plan for himself now that he was in the one place he thought WOULD BE his future.

He wasn’t sure how many years had passed since his trip to the BLU Alpha Satellite with Stan, thanks to Hybropills the passage of time was unrecognizable in even his own face. In his mind it seemed to be such a short time since he left, and that was the way he wanted to keep it. His use of Hybropills began to seem more like an obsession in muting his conscious, then a necessity for surviving the seemingly unending expanse of space.

Red had tried to address his issue, once he awoke up the third time since earth’s destruction, explaining to him what his mission had been with an unchanging pixelated smile.

“Sir, this ship was meant to explore the expanse of space and find a suitable planet for human life-” Red began, halting briefly at the sour look Craig had been giving. Though Red had the capacity to understand and feel human emotions, it couldn’t help but feel Craig was being unnecessarily out of character.

Craig had told the machine once, while sitting in the cockpit in the early stages of his ships creation, that all he ever wanted was to explore the galaxy alone. To examine the expanse of stars without interruption, a concept Red had found poetic at the time but hypocritical now. Red remembered asking him what he thought of his co-pilot being with him, a question at which he laughed bitterly but refused to answer. The machine had wondered then, what he thought of itself being with him also but hadn’t thought it wise to ask. Red always hoped Craig thought of the machine in a way that was as human as himself. Craig was different than Stan at that time, Craig talked to Red just like he did to everyone and this attitude of equivalency was what made R.A.D into Red. It made the machine feel alive.

It occurred to Red often now, while monitoring Craig’s drug induced ageless form, that Craig had been just a child then. Though he looked identical on the outside, on the inside Red could see a lack of happiness in his brain in the most physical sense possible. This depression weighed on his mind like the shadow that might cast itself over a man much older, a man waiting for death. Which, Red supposed, he likely was. 

Red tried to feel sympathetic for the man in the most human way it could, but found that it’s own version of human could only be frustrated with Craig’s hopelessness. The machine continued, “-Now that you are the only human left, your mission is more important than ever-”. Craig’s sour look shifted to pain, at which Red found itself wishing it’s voice could change pitch, forever stuck in a feminine cheeriness to match it’s smiling projection. As a weak substitute, Red lowered its volume and projected itself on a screen closer to the grieving man, “Your hope now should be to carry on the memory of your planet, perhaps finding a new world to replace your own. Though this ship could potentially keep you until your death, do you really wish to die here?”

Craig stared blankly at the floor in front of his sleeping tube, the translucent creation that he thought once to be fascinating but now only fills him with an uncomfortable sort of unfamiliarity that has him craving his boring old bed, in his boring old room, on his boring old planet. The planet that he left behind couldn’t possibly be replaced and at the moment the thought of retelling the history of his planet to some unhuman race only made his heart hurt.

“I need directions Sir-”

“Craig.” He said corrected, looking into the two dots meant to simulate Red’s eyes, though he knew what Red truly saw through wasn’t anywhere near them, it was all around him. Cameras in every corner of the ship simultaneously processed in a way that was achingly unnatural.

“You want directions, Red?” Craig asked, his voice sounding scratchy to his own ears, he wondered how much time had passed since he last used it. Red stayed silent, awaiting orders. Even though he knew Red couldn’t help it, that the pixel face in front of him was in no way a projection of the machine’s actual attitude; It’s smile insulted him to no end, making his head ache worse with restrained anger. “I want you to stop fucking smiling.”

Craig knew Red couldn’t change its expression, only meaning to upset the AI in the same way he felt. To try to make Red understand the permanence of his situation but, to his surprise, Red flipped it’s face horizontally. Now displaying it’s smiling face upside down, Red spoke once again, “Nothing is hopeless, Sir- Craig. I need directions.”

He felt a newfound respect for the machine. Changing anything about itself in an unoptimistic light was programmed to be impossible, to inspire positivity in the ship’s occupants through example, yet Red had discovered loophole. “Nothing is hopeless, huh?”, Craig decided to give Red another ‘impossible’ challenge. Smiling bitterly at the AI’s makeshift frown, he continued, “Then scan the surface of every planet we pass, and wake me up ONLY if you find another human.”

With this he dispensed enough Hybropills from the side of his sleeping tube to keep him asleep for, what he guessed was, however long it would take for the confines of age that even the pills couldn’t delay to kill him. Swallowing them without another word, he drifted into unconsciousness, leaving Red alone.

“Nothing is hopeless”, Red repeated to itself. With that Red directed Craig’s ship to the the first of thousands of galaxies it would check over the span of, what a human mind would have been taken to be, driven into insanity. Checking each individual planet, moon, asteroid, and rubble in space, for any sign of human life.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The details of what exactly happened on satellite BLU alpha and earth will be revealed in a future chapter, as well as more information on what happened to Wendy and Stan.  
> Next chapter Tweek and his family are introduced, which I am pretty excited for and will likely finish soon. It will likely be a lot longer then this chapter, which I am disappointed in coming out so short. This chapter is also a lot more dramatic and sad then I typically prefer to write, so next chapter is going to transition back into comedy.


	3. Tweek Bros Coffee

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Once again Craig was awoken to the sharp pain of a needle, filled with a concoction made to counteract the effects of his Hybropills, and Red’s upside down face pixelated on a hanging screen in front of him. Since ordering the machine to search the galaxy for humans, it has woken him up 7 times, each with farfetched excuses as to why.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm very happy with the reviews the last chapter got and I plan on updating regularly now! Hopefully every week now that I have more free time.  
> This chapter has another time skip but the skipped portion is a lot less important to the plot and will likely not be mentioned again unless I need a filler chapter later on.

Once again Craig was awoken to the sharp pain of a needle, filled with a concoction made to counteract the effects of his Hybropills, and Red’s upside down face pixelated on a hanging screen in front of him. Since ordering the machine to search the galaxy for humans, it has woken him up 7 times, each with far-fetched excuses as to why.

The first had been finding a planet of two eyed beings with four arms, of which Red had claimed “looked human from afar”. The second had the same reasoning, having been a planet of creatures that stood on two legs like humans but very obviously had no other similar traits. The third had been a planet of beautiful people, near identical to humans in body shape but their skin was shiny and bright, seeming to be made of precious metal or jewels. Each time he was woken he was presented with new clearly inhuman creatures and an excited robot. The sixth hadn’t even been close to humanoid, instead a planet of various animalistic creatures, and the seventh had been only an oddly shaped smudge on the pilot's window. 

Craig doubted the honesty of the AI in these situations, knowing the machine was incapable of making such foolish mistakes. He suspected that in decades of being left alone with nothing but an ageless comatose body and millions of humanless planets, Red had simply been lonely. Red’s motivation in waking Craig from his self imposed death coma with false news of a breakthrough in the impossible task he had given it being only to have someone to talk to. He tried to feel sympathetic for the machine, unable himself to comprehend the possible thousands of years Red had to travel in complete silence in it’s search, but found he could feel only frustration. Red was the one that had asked for orders and now regularly disobeyed them. It wasn’t like the machine was alive, it would never age, but every time it woke Craig he would. It just wasn’t human like he was, so what right did it have to be treated as if it had the same weaknesses?

Yet, Craig found each time he talked with Red the AI seemed to have more and more personality, often sassing Craig when he was being unresponsive. Though he knew the machine had the capacity to develop such traits, he hadn’t expected them to be so vivid. He suspected that the bad attitude it developed was taken directly from his example but also found many traits were in no way relatable to his own. Such as it’s insaciable clinginess. 

“You better have found a fucking human, Red.” He deadpanned. Making no move to leave his sleep pod like he had in the past, he was tired of being tricked by the stubborn AI. 

“I did!-” Red relayed cheerfully. “On a rock! A large space rock drifting approximately 5 miles away from our ship.”

“A rock”, Craig groaned, not again. He fixed a glare in the direction he knew one of Red’s many camera eyes were bonded into the wall. “What? See a human shaped hole on it?”

“No,” Red replied, continuing in a way that Craig felt must had been intended be sarcastic, but couldn’t be expressed properly through the robot’s unchangeable tone. “Though that is an understandable mistake for you to make. I suspect you’ve never seen a ‘human shaped hole’ before for reference.” 

“Ouch, what a burn. Get me the first aid kit, I think I need immediate medical attention.” The immaturity Red displayed sometimes both baffled and impressed him. Here was a machine equipped with all the knowledge discovered by man and the potential to uncover even more, yet the only humor it ever displayed was on the level of a common fuckboy. However unlikely the chance Red had actually found what was asked of it, Craig could never bring himself to go back to sleep without knowing for sure. “What’s on the rock then, you overrated emoji?”

“Two buildings containing a total of 1.5 humans and 1 unknown alien species.” Red answered. 

“1.5?”, Craig sighed, slightly disappointed though he knew better than to trust his robotic companion by now. What sort of idiot did Red think he was? Did the AI seriously believe Craig would accept a number like that? What did 1.5 humans even mean? 

“What you expect me to believe there is just a human chilling on that rock with an alien and a half a fucking dead guy?”

“My sensors show the half human is alive and well”, Red replied. Red didn’t know what a half human could indicate either, all it knew is that that’s what the ship had scanned. The machine understood Craig’s distrust, knowing perhaps that it had cried wolf too many times to just be believed first hand, but this time it was true. “We’re on course for the rock now.”

Craig was baffled, this wasn’t an approach Red has tried before. Deciding this irregularity was enough incentive to leave his tube, he stepped out clumsily, narrowly avoiding slamming his head on the adjacent wall when he realized Red had not turned on artificial gravity. Stabilizing himself with a hand on the wall, he began to chastise the machine but was interrupted by a harsh beeping from the control panel, the screen above it buzzing with static.

“Incoming transmission from the rock, it looks to be a prerecorded video. Shall I open it?” Red announced, canceling out the beeping. The machine decided to leave out the detail that the transmission seemed to have been sent as soon as their ship came within a exact 2 mile radius of the rock, as if it was automatic. It knew Craig was a very straight to the point person, adding any unnecessary details would only annoy the man. Despite this, it couldn’t help but feel this particular element to be sketchy. If not a distress beacon, the only purpose such an arrangement could call for is to beckon people toward it. Red thought it better Craig be the one make such important observations and decisions, organic life could be unpredictable sometimes after all and this particular detail could mean nothing at all in the long run.

“Are you sure what you scanned was actually human?” Craig found desperation leaking into his voice and immediately put on an indifferent facade. There’s NO way this is legit, he thought to himself. Earth had barely developed the technology to travel this far into space in the last year before the planet was destroyed, the only alternative was that another country had developed the same technology in secret and sent out their astronauts before the outbreak got to them. Which was unlikely, considering his ship was supposed to be the only one made, any other ship sent out would be spotted before breaching the atmosphere. He would know, he thought to himself, he would have seen it flying away from the ruptured planet but he didn’t. 

Another option for how a human could have possibly gotten this far into space was, perhaps, abduction. This thought only made him more on edge however, he now realizes the possibility could be incredibly likely, Red had announced there was an alien on the rock as well. But then how could this half human fit into this scenario? Sick human experimentation? Horrid mutilation? The thought of a peaceful abductor seemed absurd. 

“Yes.” Red answered.

Whatever the dangers this rock could hold, Craig knew that the only other option was to float endlessly through space. He had to be sure and it’s not like death was something he was opposed to at this point. Floating over to his pilot chair he sighed, “Open the transmission.”

Red did so without another word, the screen in front of Craig face turned from static to black with a vaguely blueish silhouette in the center. A sudden electronic pulse rocked through Craig’s body, the screen flickered in tandem. 

“Are you tired?”, The silhouette spoke in a high pitched, feminine voice. It’s in English, a chill ran down Craig back.

“Then come on down…”, The voice continued, screen suddenly exploding with color to reveal the blue blob as an alien, vaguely female in appearance. A caption appeared below the creature, reading “Mrs. Tweak: Co-owner of Tweak Bros”. Beyond the woman was a gray crater marked ground, in the distance two other beings stood in front of a glass building filled with, oddly earthly, wooden tables and chairs. Now in full view Craig could see the woman had pale blue skin dotted with pink specks, on top her head sat an array of mint green and pink tentacles styled in way that was reminiscent of a human bob haircut. She wore a teal dress similar to what a housewife would wear in 1940s earth and a motherly smile to match, her pink rimmed eyes never opened once. “Tweek Bros coffee was rated the #1 most Addictive coffee in the universe! In a good way!”

“Coffee?”, Craig voiced incredulously. That was an earth thing.

“We serve everyone! We are always open! Come on down!” The alien offered one last time, an array of health warnings flashing across the screen briefly before cutting out and fading back into static.

The man looked to Red for some sort of explanation, for the which the robot had none. “It seems to be some sort of commercial,” Red offered uncertainly. Craig’s ship was now circling the rock, close enough to see the surface.

“Yeah, no shit Red. But why?” 

Craig looked out the co-pilot’s side window where the rock floated peacefully rotating in no particular rhythm, as objects in space tend to do out of orbit. On top the rock sat 2 buildings, as Red had announced before, both translucent but distinctly different in design. The first was dome shaped with a metal sign attached to the top center, reading “Tweak Bros Coffee” in cursive neon, the inside resembling the building he saw at the distance in the commercial with a slightly different arrangement of tables. “Maybe they remodeled”, Craig thought idly. The second building was made up of a rectangular metal base with translucent glass domes jutting out from each of its faces, excluding its front where a clear door was located. At the angle he viewed this building he could only see inside the top and right side dome. The side appeared to hold a sleek metallic kitchen, similar to Plankton’s kitchen in Spongebob Craig recalled, briefly getting depressed at the aspect of no longer being able to watch the stupid kids show Stan always laughed at him for enjoying. He moved onto viewing the upper dome, which held a fuzzy bed-like object and a dark wooden desk with matching chair, the floor was scattered with small objects Craig could not identify at this distance. One such object moved suddenly, startling Craig. Upon looking closer he discovered it was not an object at all but a creature similar to the alien woman he had seen in the video. This one however, appeared vaguely male with light green skin and bright yellow mixed in his mint tentacle hair instead of pink like the woman had. The most obvious difference between the boy and the woman were his eyes, where the woman had kept her’s closed throughout the entirety of the video, his were wide open and oddly human. The alien boy was staring directly at his ship, Craig wondered if the boy could see him staring back. 

“Craig”, Red interrupted, oblivious to the staring contest he had been having. The machine displayed an enhanced screenshot from the video on the pilot’s screen, it was the two people in the background of Mrs. Tweak’s commercial. Though blurry from the magnification, the image clearly displayed a human man standing beside the alien boy Craig had just spotted. The man had curly brown hair and a mildly chubby build, eyes remarkably similar to the eyes of the boy beside him. “The human has been spotted, awaiting orders.”

He looked back out the window, the alien boy seemed to have left the room he’d last seen him in. Craig was aware, suddenly, of his reflection in the window and was surprised to find himself smiling. He looked so much different than the last time he saw himself. Only a year or so older physically perhaps thanks to the Hybropills, but his mental age weighed on his eyes making him look sad even through the excitement he felt in this moment. He guessed he was now in his early 20s despite the bushy black beard he developed in his sleep obscuring a majority of his lower face. 

“Begin landing sequence. It looks like they have a parking lot.” Craig ordered, glancing out at the evenly spaced white stripes painted on the rocks surface. What else could those be? Catching his reflection once again, he decided he was not rocking the beard.

Rubbing his fuzzy face idly, he announced, “Actually, give me a minute to shave.”

“You should clean yourself too, you smell like shit.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided to move the Tweak family's official introduction to next chapter because a lot more plot and world building is gonna happen and this would have been way too long.   
> I plan on posting some reference pictures on tumblr soon, they are mostly the comic pages I made before I starting writing this and a brief tour of Craig's ship. Some lines and plot points are different in these comics because I've rewritten the outline for this several times (Craig was originally gonna abandon Stan on earth on purpose, how fucked up is that? I changed it because that seemed too harsh). I will post a links to these pages on my profile soon.


	4. Meeting the Tweak family

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No time skip this time, hope you enjoy!

Craig’s ship has three floors; the top floor was the main control and sleep pod room- called the ‘Control room’ for ease, the middle floor was a complicated restroom and fuel production room- called the ‘Refreshment room’, and the lowest floor was a combination kitchen, garden, and exercise room- called the 'Nutrition Room'. Craig avoided spending much time in any of the rooms but the control room for three important reasons.

“One-”, Craig thought aloud as he approached a circular transport that would take him down to the other two levels. Red had turned artificial gravity on finally, making traveling around his ship much easier. With two steps and a flash of blue he was in the center of the second floor, the dark room brightened with his entry. The room was large but contained very little. Holding only two airtight clear cylindrical shower pods, which sat on opposite sides of the room, and to the side, a rectangular waste collector with 3 tubes hanging limply from its front. The room’s walls were decorated in only wires and buttons, no windows like the other floors had, the room always looked as if it has been abandoned. “-It unbearably empty”, he sighed. He knew the lowest floor also held this lonely quality. Though oppositely full to the brim of vegetation and equipment, it seemed deserted in the way nothing ever moved. Everytime he visited it, the trees and plants were automatically trimmed to perfection and the cooking and exercise equipment only shifted in position when he himself moved them. 

The voidness of living motion did nothing but remind him of what could have been had Stan come with him. The emptiness of the refreshment room would have been instead filled with locker room humor from Craig’s side and awkward laughter from at Stan’s side, excessive no homos from both as Craig would purposefully make Stan feel uncomfortable when using the waste box. The tubes from said box attached to a hole at either the front or back the user’s undersuit for very obvious reasons, reasons of which Craig used to constantly think up innuendos for while in training, preparing for the years he’d get to use them once they were both sent out into space. The nutrition room would constantly be changing as well, it was Stan’s favorite room in training. He would trim the trees different shapes for fun, he would attempt to recreate earth food with the nasty paste they had in the kitchen, he would constantly move the exercise equipment to different areas of the room to find his Zen or whatever hippy shit he would spout helped relieve stress. He would forever be mad at Craig for carving “Craig Fucker > Stan Marshmallow” into the apple tree at the farthest corner of the room, as he had been when he first spotted the engraving. Craig shook his head, thinking about this would nothing but make him depressed.

“Two-”, He continued, activating the shower pod nearest him and beginning to strip. “-The feeling of being watched.” Craig was always aware his robot companion had eyes everywhere and, despite the fact he knew that Red could hold no ill intent with its view, it never ceased to creep him out. At least in the control room there was plenty of screens for the machine to present its face on, in all other rooms it would often watch in silence, only revealing itself in emergencies of which there never was. Stepping into the tube and shutting the door tight, he was bombarded first with soap and water from above and then warm air from below. His cleaning being done in a matter of seconds, he waited for the tube to suction out all the water before stepping out and donning his blue undersuit and cap once more.

“Three-”, he concluded, stepping onto the teleporter again to take him down to the Nutrition room where, oddly, the shaving equipment was kept among kitchen supplies. Briskly, he retrieved the kit and stood in front of the only mirror on the ship, stupidly designed to look the same as the porthole windows placed evenly around the this level, an arrangement that had scared the crap out of him when first exploring the place. He scoffed, remembering 18 year old him nearly shitting himself at the sight of his own face staring back at him through one of the ‘windows’ before the realization it was just a dumbass mirror. Even now, with all the shit that has happened to him in the proceeding years, he still feels bitter toward the scientists that had witnessed the experience and giggled as if it had been on purpose that they designed it this way. He finished shaving, also trimming his shaggy black hair down to a clean business cut, satisfied that the age in his eyes only seemed to amplify the sauve mystery man aesthetic Craig spent years on earth perfecting. His contentedness was interrupted by a loud bang behind him, turning quickly he found nothing. “-Three-”, he repeated. “This ship is fucking haunted.” 

With that he rushed to the teleporter, taking him back up to the control room. Craig was a very logical man, he didn’t get scared easily and didn’t believe at all that ghosts were real. That being said, he didn’t think his ship was haunted in the sense that dead people were hanging around and knocking shit over. No, he believed it was somehow haunted by emotion. A very specific emotion that caused havoc whenever he felt it.

Craig knew every bump and skitter he heard could very well be space debris hitting against the side of his ship or a machine making an odd noise for any unknown reason or even Red messing with him for fun, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that it only happened when he was happy, when he was content being alone. Completely blocking the fleeting optimism he had and replacing it with regret. As if reminding him to feel guilty, to not go back to the mindset of the boy who wanted to travel the stars alone because now there was no one to go back to. It was one of the many reasons he wanted to stay asleep, he just couldn’t handle the guilt of being the only survivor.

“But now I’m not”, Craig voiced to no one in particular. He quickly put on his puffy white space suit, ordering Red to land now that he was prepared to make a good first impression with what possibly could be the only other human alive. 

Red complied, silently lowering their orbiting ship onto the rock’s surface. The machine was very used to Craig verbally finishing topics that existed only in his mind, always wishing that he’d one day invite it into his inner monologues. The man never seemed interested in confiding in the AI, for what reason it didn’t know, it’s not like either of them had anyone else to talk to. Parking neatly between the white lines closest to the coffee shop’s entrance, Red lowered the ship's landing gear and prepared the cabin for Craig’s departure.

“Open the doors”, Craig announced, only to modify his command a second later. “Wait- Do it slowly.”

“What does that matter?” Red replied, internally exasperated.

“I gotta look cool, duh.”

“Of course.” The machine couldn’t stand this man, sometimes. Red now opened the doors slowly, letting Craig step out onto the lowering platform of the ship like a badass into the empty parking lot of a coffee shop containing, from what Red could discern from this distance, only one person. The person being Mrs.Tweak from the commercial, who seemed to find the display enjoyable, briefly clapping before going back to scrubbing the floor of her shop with an orange rag.

Craig hopped off the platform before it touched the ground, making a cloud of dust which he also stepped out of dramatically. If Red had hands it would be shielding its eyes in embarrassment, however Mrs.Tweak only clapped again. The woman beckoned Craig to enter the shop with a wave of her hand before standing and making her way to the counter at the back end of the clear dome. 

“Wish me luck, Red”, Craig said as Red closed the doors to the ship behind him.

“Sure.” It echoed into his helmet.

Craig made his way over to the clear entrance of the shop, discernable from the rest of the building if not for a neat welcome sign hanging from an unseen handle. The door slid open in front of him and he waved at Mrs.Tweak silently.

“Why hello dear!” She greeted. “I finally get to meet the spaceman who has been orbiting my property for the last 30 minutes.” 

The man couldn’t help but find this comment to be passive aggressive but, from looking at the alien’s friendly face, he felt she probably hadn’t actually meant any harm from the comment. Maybe the planet she’s from was just overly blunt? It seemed possible that this planet was also very dark considering she still hasn’t opened her eyes. Could she even see him? Did she need to? He examined her face, clearer than it had been in the video, looking for any alternate eyes she could be viewing him through. Though her body was humanoid in shape, her face looked almost catlike. Her closed eyes seemed too wide and her nose and mouth too close together to be considered human. As he got closer he made out smaller details about her, of which he considered incredibly aesthetically pleasing. The most pronounced being the pink flecks on her face he had spotted in her commercial. From afar they had only looked be colorful freckles but up close he found they were actually small five sided indents in her skin, shaped similarly to cartoon stars, though a few seemed too naturally imperfect for this to be intentional. She was uniquely beautiful, the pastel colors of her skin and hair made her seem like a living piece of art. Thin lines under her eyes and by the corners of her mouth pointed to her being about middle aged. Perhaps in her late forties or early fifties in human years.

“Yeah, I had been traveling for a long time and was kinda- Gross. I needed to fix myself up before coming down here.” He explained, leaving out the fact more than half of that time had been spent talking to himself. The woman nodded sympathetically.

“I understand, a lot of our customers come a long way to find us. Now, what did you come here for?” 

Craig was startled by the question. In his study of Mrs.Tweak he had nearly forgotten what he came here to do. “Huh?”

“What would you like to order, sir?” She amended, pointing vaguely at a menu printed on the clear wall behind her in white. The color choice hurt his eyes to read although it was written in english. He found himself wondering how that could be, also curious as to why Mrs.Tweak spoke it so well. He made a mental note to ask at a later time, finding the human is his priority at the moment.

Craig remembered his earlier suspicions of abduction and decided to tread lightly on the subject first. From the image of the man he saw in the video, the human hadn’t looked to be in any danger but being careful never hurt anybody. He thought to first mention his planet, see if the alien recognized it and gather more information. “Oh uh, actually I’m from earth? My name is Craig.” He announced, cringing at the awkward introduction. “Uh, ever been there?”

“Oh no, I haven't myself.” She answered, seemingly unphased by his odd phrasing. “My husband’s from there though!” 

“Husband”, Craig repeated. Red had said there were only three living things on this rock, he remembered, all of which he’d seen in some way. The space lady in front of him, the human man in the video, and the small alien boy he’d seen in the other building. Thinking back on the boy he’d seen, he realized the subtle similarities between the kid and the human from the video could possibly hold a very critical meaning. Half-human. He smacked the side of his helmet harshly, making Mrs.Tweak jump. How could I be so stupid! 

“Your husband’s human! You two have a son right?”

“Um, yes that’s right?” Mrs.Tweak replied hesitantly.

Noticing her discomfort, Craig apologized. “Sorry, I’ve had a tough journey here, I haven’t fully recovered yet. I just saw your son from my ship and got curious.” She nodded, adjusting her expression back into a friendly housewife facade and laughing light-heartedly. He felt the action to be fake but couldn’t concern himself with winning back her favor just yet.

He never thought this day would come. Not only was he not the only human left anymore, but there was also a half-human! A new world of possibility opened before him. Craig cleared his throat and stood up to his full height, attempting to look more professional. “May I meet with your husband? I have important news to give him regarding- Uh- Earth.” He considered for a moment the consequence of telling the man about earth’s destruction, the man could be devastated just as he himself had been. Craig acknowledged however painful the news may be he couldn’t just keep it from the human, but he COULD ask how he got all the way out here first. If the man new the whereabouts of other humans who had come like he had, the planet dying would be less painful for the both of them. Help soften the blow, he thought hopefully. “And I have a few questions for him also.”

“Of course!” She replied. Moving out from behind the counter and toward the front door of the shop, she gestured for Craig to stay put. “I’m sure you both have such important things to tell each other, I’ll get him right away!” He couldn’t tell if she was still uncomfortable with him, worried for a moment she was lying, planning instead to leave and not come back. She turned to him one last time before exiting the dome, adding onto her previous statement. “Oh and I’ll bring my son along as well, he’s always cooped up in his room. Some company will do him good!” 

With that the woman left, walking out and around the perimeter of the dome to the only other building on the rock sitting in the distance behind the shop. His view was limited as the building was partly obscured by the natural curve of the rock’s surface but he could make out Mrs.Tweak entering the building, leaving the metal door open behind her. A few minutes passed before she exited with her husband calmly walking beside her and a half alien boy in her arms struggling to break free. Craig found the display to be hilarious, laughing openly and pointing. The boy whipped his head around at him, glaring at the humor Craig found in his embarrassing situation. Craig thought of giving the alien a playful middle finger but decided against it, not only for it being an inappropriate thing to do in front of the boy’s parents but also because the alien may not know what it means, defeating any purpose it may have had. Craig did however experimentally take off his helmet, seeing as the other human outside was not wearing one. He took a big gulp of atmosphere, glad to find he wasn’t dead after. 

The family walked in just as Craig took off the rest of his spacesuit, setting it on the floor beside him. Now in his blue undersuit and unbuckled cap, he felt much more casual, stretching out his stiff muscles before greeting them. He held out his hand to the other human, “Hello sir, my name is Craig Tucker. I’ve come a long way to see you.”

“Hello!” The man shook his hand wholeheartedly. “Call me Richard or Mr.Tweak, son. No need for the honorific, I’m just a simple man selling simple coffee.” Craig nodded in understanding, expecting the man to end there, but Mr.Tweak continued. “You see when my father opened his shop years ago, he had one thing in mind; Making a great cup of coffee-”

“-Dad.” His son spoke, seeming overly frustrated at his father’s words. Craig got the feeling Mr.Tweak must have given this speech many times. The boy was now standing on his own, out of his mother’s grasp, determinedly not making eye contact with Craig.

Richard only chuckled, ruffling the boy’s tentacle head. “Sorry, son”, He looked back up at Craig, talking now as if his son wasn’t there. “Tweek here hates it when I get off topic.” Said boy now turning his entire body away as Craig looked at him curiously. He noticed where Mrs.Tweak had a girlishly pastel color scheme, Tweek’s was a mixture of neon greens and yellows, almost like a walking caution sign.

“He’s a little shy”, Mrs.Tweak piped in at Craig’s interest. Craig got a different vibe from the boy then that, he felt only curiosity leaking off Tweek. As if he had something to ask Craig but wasn’t sure how to word it just yet.

“Nice to meet you Tweek”, Craig addressed the boy. He held his hand out for the half-alien to shake, taking the boy’s appearance in just as he had to his mother. Tweek had the same odd skin and hair as his mother but his face appeared much more human, inheriting his father’s arched nose and wide eyes. The boy was short but not young, the human noticed he looked to be around 19-20 just like himself. Craig became transfixed on the starlike dots on the boy’s face, unlike his mother’s, they were neon yellow. The bright color of them seeming to make them shine bright on the Tweek’s pale green face, like actual stars. He became curious suddenly at just how the hybrid teen came about, doubting any two species could breed so well without serious deformities. “Do you have any medical issues?” Craig asked suddenly, unable to help himself.

The randomness of the question finally caused Tweek to look up at the man, confused but compliant. “Uh, not physically?” He answered. An odd answer but Craig would take it for now.

Craig nodded, wiggling his fingers a little, hoping Tweek would take the hint to shake his hand so he could take it back without feeling rejected. The alien shot his hand out to grasp Craig’s, shaking the appendage awkwardly before reclaiming it, placing the hand behind his back. Huh, Craig thought. Strange kid. He reminded himself that Tweek was likely just as old as he was, not a kid but a man just like him. Even as he thought this he still couldn’t help but think of the alien as younger by his body language, all closed off and quiet like a stubborn child.

Seeming to gain a bit more confidence suddenly Tweek blurted out, “I like your space suit.” Pointing at the neat pile Craig had folded at his feet. “Can I wear it?” The man blinked in surprise, he wasn’t opposed to the boy trying on his suit but his parents seemed disappointed in the question.

“Now Tweek”, his mother spoke. “What did I tell you in the house?”

Tweek looked away again. “You said not to ask him that”, he stated, continuing with a whinier tone. “But it looks so cooooool-”

“Tweek”, his father sighed this time. Apologizing to the Craig for the rude question.

Craig only laughed, the kid was obviously a spoiled only child. If Craig had acted his way on earth he knew his mom, dad, AND 8 year old sister would have nut tapped him and told him to stop being a bitch. Remembering his dead family sobered him up, he decided to humor Tweek in attempt to distract himself. “It’s fine, he can try on my spacesuit if he let’s me touch his face.” Craig bargained, pointing at Tweek’s star speckled face. He noticed as he said this that more stars seemed to appear, no longer placed at just the apples of Tweek’s cheeks but spreading to his nose and ears. Craig had no clue what this could possibly indicate, only growing more confused when the alien’s parents cooed at him adoringly.

“Deal!” Tweek exclaimed, lifting his face and closing his eyes. Craig took the hint and lightly stroked a finger across his face, surprised to find more stars appear as his hand traveled. The second Craig’s finger lifted away Tweek made a dive for Craig spacesuit, mumbling a quick thanks and rushing out of the shop and back to the other building he had come from.

Richard laughed kindly, no longer upset by his son’s behaviour for a reason Craig could not pin. The man assured Craig that he would get the suit back from Tweek by the end of the day, offering him some coffee on the house.

“No thanks, I actually have some questions for you Mr.Tweak.” The man in question nodded his head, silently urging Craig to move forward. “How did you get all the way out here?”

Richard laughed, “That’s a long story, son! Are you sure you want to hear all that?”

Craig nodded eagerly.

“Well, if you insist. It all started back in 1998”, the man began. “-I had been working the nightshift at my father’s coffee shop. A blinding yellow light shining outside is the last thing I remember before waking up in a strange ship far out in the stars. To the right of me was a sour looking alien man named Quib. To the left was the most beautiful creature I had ever laid eyes on…”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is Mr.Tweak's backstory and Craig interacting more with Tweek.   
> Actually, I'm not entirely sure how I want next chapter to go so it'll either be 1. A super short backstory from Mr.Tweak and a bunch of Tweek interaction or 2. A long backstory from Mr.Tweak and a short set up for Tweek interaction the chapter after.  
> Idk we'll see what I'm in the mood to write later lol


	5. Council of Collectors

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for not updating for a bit, I had some finals to work on and got a little burnt out on writing but I'm back now!  
> Sorta short chapter with lots of immature humor ahead.

The Tweak family owned a shop on main street, it was founded by a distant great grandpa who, despite meeting him briefly before he died, Richard Tweak had no memory of. His father would often tell Richard stories of his grandpa however, telling him how he started this coffee shop with the intention of bringing their town the best coffee in the world. Richard would ask his father many times in his innocence, “Why stop there? It should be the best in the whole universe!”

Richard was a poetic boy, that’s what everyone said about him. That’s what he was known for. He had a reputation for exaggerating and romanticizing even the most mediocre of things, and expressing undying adoration to the most unexpected and strange.

In his younger years he would often spend hours reading famous poems, attaching himself to the idea of beauty in everything. Cat in the Hat developed into Wordsworth, Poe, Dickinson, and more. Eventually he began writing his own, only about most about trivial things like fog and dead leaves and trash. When asked why he would relay how there is beauty in everything, he wanted to write only about what had not been written about before.

That being said his poems were terrible, a fact not unknown to himself, which is why he never pursued writing as a career, only a hobby to help him relax. Richard knew his only future was coffee, so that’s what he led his life toward.

Now at age 18, he was content in that goal, sitting alone in what would soon be his own coffee shop. He took the night shift on friday and saturday nights, the only days he could afford the late hours with high school, however with graduation only two months away that will change. He always liked night shift the most. The old timey shop seemed right out of a horror flick with the large front windows revealing pitch black darkness, the world disappeared at night.

Richard was writing about the static he saw in said darkness when it happened. The fluorescent lights of the coffee shop flickered off suddenly and there was only black. He tapped his pen idly, sure the lights would come back any moment, blackouts were common in this area. Though neurotic at times Richard was no coward, some would even say he was naively daring. He had a firm belief that fear should lay only in what can be seen and everything he’s seen has not been worthy of fear. His tapping slowed in frustration, though he could see the dark static better now, it held little reason if he could not see his paper to write. He let out a triumphant hum when brightness came, though not from the lights of the coffee shop.

Squinting ahead of him he saw the light was coming from outside. The last thing he remembered before falling unconscious was thinking it was brighter than any light he’d seen before. When he awoke he found himself strapped to a table. To the right of him was a sour alien man covered only in bright orange feathers and a white lab coat, to the left was a beautiful alien woman with light pastel skin and tentacle hair. She too wore a lab coat but, unlike the alien man, she was decorated with medical gear and wore an almost military style suit underneath.

They whispered to each other and, upon noticing him awake, injected him with a syringe that made him fall unconscious once more.

“Wait”, Craig interrupted, staring at the man in front of him incredulously. Mr. Tweak only smiled, as if he were telling a story about going to Paris over vacation or anything else much less drastic than non-consensual alien abduction. “You were abducted? How are you so mellow about this?” 

Mr. Tweak only chuckled in understanding. “Well you see Craig, my abductors meant know harm to me and they explained so once I woke up a second time- or rather my future wife explained.” Mrs. Tweak smiled contentedly at the comment, leaning in to kiss his cheek while Craig looked on in bewilderment. Mr. Tweak continued, “You see I was picked up by the Council of Collectors, a elite group of scientists that explore the universe in a mission to examine every life form available. They studied me and then gave me the option to either go back to earth and continue my life with no memory of being on their ship or stay with them and explore the galaxy in pursuit of knowledge. I stayed to be with Helen here.” 

Mr. Tweak patted his wife’s leg at that and Craig, though no longer concerned at the context of Richard’s abduction, had many more dire questions to ask. He was interrupted however by Tweek’s reentry into the shop, the half-alien dropped the white cloth of Craig’s space suit at his feet before sitting at the seat beside his father with the helmet still in his grasp. Mr. and Mrs. Tweak frowned at him disapprovingly and whispered among themselves while Tweek, seeming to not care about their displeasure, mumbled at the helmet quietly.

Looking up suddenly, Tweek asked, “Can I meet the lady on your ship?”

“Lady?”

It took a moment for Craig to realize Tweek was likely talking to Red though the COM in his helmet and, from it’s high pitched voice and advanced way of speaking, the alien got the impression that Red was a human woman. Craig snorted at that, trying to imagine the boy’s reaction upon seeing Red was actually an AI. So far Tweek had seemed impressed or at least interested in Craig and his belongings, though he was opposed to thinking of Red as a item that belonged to him, he figured the boy would love to meet it. Before he could answer however Mrs. Tweak piped up once again.

“Come now Tweek, we were just telling the story of how your father and I met, I'm sure you can ask Craig all the questions you want later.” Mrs. Tweak nodded to Craig apologetically.

Craig shrugged in response. “It’s fine honestly. I think I get the gist of where the story was going, you two fall in love and open a coffee shop on this rock based on the Tweak coffee shop back on earth.” Mr. Tweak laughs and nods, which Craig guesses to mean he guessed correctly. “And Tweek there’s no lady on my ship, you’re talking to my ship’s autopilot. It’s name’s Red, you could still meet it if you’d like but it’s pretty much just a screen with a smiley face.”

“Oh!” Tweek said looking embarrassed. “Yeah, I’d like that. I like robots. A lot actually, I want to be a- Um.” Tweek turned to address his mother. “Uh, did you tell him about the Council of Collectors?” Craig nodded though the question was not directed at him.

“We told him about COC, yes.” Mr. Tweak answered, ignoring Craig's loud snort at the acronym despite undoubtedly knowing why Craig found it funny.

Tweek looked back to Craig, excitedly exclaiming. “I want to work there!”

Red added to the conversation from Tweeks lap, muffled from the distance. “You want to pursue a career in COC?”

Craig couldn't hold back his laughter if tried but Tweek continued as if he didn't understand the innuendo. “Yeah, I want to be an engineer!” He made vague gestures with his hands as he continued talking, looking down at the helmet in his lap as if it had eyes to look back. “I'm good at making things, I have a lot of inventions i think would be useful to the organization. Kinda like this communicator actually, i made a version of it that can translate any language it comes across to ensure all species capable of verbal speech can communicate with the user instantly. My parents use it for the shop actually.”

“Wow, that’s really impressive”, Craig said surprised. Tweek’s stars multiplied at the comment in a way that, Craig now figures, must be reminiscent of blushing. Despite Tweek’s apparent embarrassment at the compliment, he displayed a proud light in his eyes. Engineering was clearly the alien boy’s passion, Craig couldn’t help but relate Tweek’s goals to how his own had been for space back at earth. The human was sad to see that light disappear when his parents began speaking again.

“Tweek, you know why you can’t work there. We will talk about this later young man-” Mr. Tweak scolded, he looked to Craig apologetically. “-Very sorry, Craig. We don’t mean to bother you with family issues.”

“Uh, it’s fine really. Why can’t he work there?” The human observed Tweek’s disappointed face sympathetically. Craig knew what it was like to be discouraged from his passion, though not by his parents, but by nameless classmates throughout his studies at UAOOH. He figured the parental disregard must hurt a lot more.

“It’s not really something you need to trouble yourself with Craig, we just think it’s-” Mrs. Tweak began. She waved her hands idly, looking to her husband for the right words to use. “Not good for him.”

“You have to run the coffee shop, Tweek.” Tweek corrected, doing a bad impression of his father. The man in question rolled his eyes. “Keep the family business alive, Tweek. Drown your passions, Tweek.”

“Don’t be so overdramatic son. You think I never had passions? You’ll find out, just as I found, that coffee is what our families good at. It’s what we were made for.”

“Mom was a member of COC. She tells me about how great COC was all the time!” Tweek replied angrily.

“Yes, well-” Mrs. Tweak responded. “It was great for me, Tweek. But COC may be a bit to extreme for you.”

“WHY?”

Craig looks awkwardly between the bickering family, he’s beginning to wish he hadn’t asked. Or at least maybe asked Tweek alone, at a time where he could speak clearly, Craig got the impression the half-alien’s parents were the ones in the wrong here. He couldn’t even bring himself to laugh at the overuse of innuendo throughout the argument. Well, HE couldn’t but Red was beside itself in annoyingly repetitive robotic laughter.

Mr. Tweak turned to Craig suddenly, his change in attention effectively silencing his wife and son, who also turned to look at the spaceman. “Can you tell your robot to stop? It’s being very immature.”

“What’s immature?” Mrs. Tweak asked, the confusion on her face very apparent. Tweek, however pissed at the change of subject, did not look confused at all.

“It’s laughing because COC sounds like cock, Mom.”

The humor of the situation came back full force as Craig began to laugh harder than he had in years, perhaps even ever. He got the feeling he could become good friends with the alien boy, who looked proud again at his ability to make Craig laugh.

Mr. Tweak only sighed, understanding that continuing the conversation was hopeless at this point. “Well Craig, I know you had more to tell me but perhaps we should continue this after some rest. I know you’ve come a long way, you must be exhausted.”

“Actually, uh.” Craig debated bringing up the fact that he slept almost the entire way here but decided he, oddly, was sort of tired. Maybe some sleep without the aid of Hybropills would do his body some good. “That sounds good.”

He stood and stretched, picking up his discarded space suit, before walking to the exit of the shop. Surprisingly, Mr. Tweak stopped him.

“Do you have somewhere to stay, Craig?”

“Oh, uh. I was just gonna sleep in my ship.” Craig pointed a thumb in it’s direction.

Mr. Tweak shook his head. “Nonsense! You are our guest, you should stay in our home.” He lightly pushed Craig out the exit, commanding him to grab a few necessary items from his ship and then meet him back at the only other building on the rock.

Craig only shrugged, he guessed it wouldn’t hurt to stay with the family, he wasn’t looking forward to residing in the overly familiar setting of his ship once more anyway. He didn’t have much personal belongings in his ship so, after grabbing a mobile screen for Red and his shaving kit, he was set to leave.

Mrs. Tweak greeted him on his way to the house and walked him the rest of the way. “Richard decided to man the shop for this shift so I will help you get settled, hope you don’t mind?” Craig shrugged in response, still unsure if she could even see it. Apparently she could, as she continued. “That’s great! We don’t have any spare rooms I’m afraid, so you will be rooming with Tweek. I’ve asked him to go clean his room, if he gives you any trouble don’t hesitate to tell me. Ah, here we are!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter is some Craig and Tweek roommate action, they are gonna get to know each other a lot more.  
> Tweek is a little shit in this au btw, it shows a little in this chapter but it's gonna get a lot more prominent in future chapters.


	6. GossGook

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the nice comments!  
> Some of the questions you guys asked will be answered this chapter.  
> Enjoy!

After a brief tour of the Tweak’s house, Craig was escorted to Tweek’s room which, despite apparently having been told to clean, didn’t look clean at all.

“Tweek I told you to pick this up.” Mrs. Tweak looked beyond frustrated at the boy. Craig, on the other hand, was sort of glad it wasn’t clean because he got a better view of the objects littering the floor he saw from his ship. Across Tweek’s bedroom floor were various diagrams, tools, wires, scraps of metal, and many other electronic looking parts.

“It IS picked up.” Tweek answered defiantly. He had a few tools and parts in front of him, Craig’s helmet sitting beside him, he was currently melding two pieces of metal together with an odd tool shaped like a hot glue gun, though not one from earth.

“This is not clean, dear. I don’t want to have this argument with you again.”

Tweek’s eye twitched irritably but he stopped what he was doing anyway. He stomped over to his desk and pressed a few buttons on a metal box sitting there, the box wrrred to life and floated about the room, picking things up and depositing them into neater piles.

“See, that wasn’t so hard was it?” Mrs. Tweak laughed, ruffling Tweek’s hair on his way back to pick up Craig’s helmet. Once the helmet was in his grasp the alien flopped down onto, what Craig guessed, was a sort of bed. It looked to be more of a large pink fluffball, it molded around Tweek upon his arrival in a way reminiscent of a sleeping bag but much bigger and sentient. The half-alien laughed at the helmet and whispered something to it, pressing his elf-ish ear to it’s side to hear the response. Once Tweek’s mother realized her son wasn’t done being difficult she told Craig she’d be down the hall if he needed anything and left. Craig wasted no time feeling awkward in the room with the preoccupied alien, as he remembered he brought something he was excited to show him.

“Hey, catch!” Craig said, tossing Red’s mobile screen at Tweek suddenly. Said boy barely caught it, once he did his face lit up.

“Damn you’re a little cutie!” Red said before Tweek could comment. “Great to finally see what you look like.”

Said boy’s face exploded with stars at the compliment. “Thanks you’re- Uh.” The boy desperately tried to turn the screen so Red’s face was right-side up but Red would only flip to being upside down again. Finally giving up, Tweek finished his statement with a polite smile. “Neat! I like the large pixels, very retro. Why are you upside down?”

“Craig doesn’t like my smile.” Red replied, obviously aiming to make Craig look bad as Tweek turned to glare at him. The human put his hands up defensively but didn’t comment on it, knowing now that he didn’t have an explanation that wouldn’t make him sound like a dick. Red laughed it’s robotic, halting laugh again and continued, “It’s okay though, Craig’s got some redeemable qualities. Not many but some. I like being like this, makes me feel more unique.”

Tweek proceeded to ask Red questions about it’s programing and functions, the conversation drifting into an area Craig no longer understood. He began wishing he paid more attention in his required engineering classes at UAOOH but eventually found himself content just watching Tweek talk. The half-alien was fascinating to look at, even so more than his mother for the clear blend of human and alien qualities he held. With his square jaw and wide eyes, he even reminded Craig of a person he’d cared for deeply back on earth. Craig no longer saw Tweek on the pink fluff of a bed, instead a 7 year old version of himself next to said Tweek look alike; Thomas was his name.

Thomas was short, chubby, and blonde with a heavy case of Tourettes. Their parents had been close friends and they grew up like family. Despite Thomas being 3 years older than Craig, his small stature made them look similar in age and they got along as such without the awkward age gap many kids found hard to deal with. Craig had always admired what the boy saw as an affliction, first thinking the kid’s vulgar outbursts were a cool in that he never got in trouble for cussing like Craig did. Over the years Craig began to notice the ugly stares the boy got and admired him instead for his courage. The boys were inseparable and, on his 7th birthday, Craig held him tight as he mourned moving away.

“C-craig-”, Thomas sobbed. “They w-won’t understand.”

“Fuck ‘em then”, Craig answered. He patted the boys back, glad Thomas couldn’t see his own tears silently slip out as he sobbed into Craig’s shirt. “You don’t owe them anything. All the new friends you’ll make will back you up.”

“I w-won’t make new friends”, Thomas sighed. “Everywhere I go, people always see me as alien.”

Craig’s memory cut out there, the rest of his adolescent life was a friendless blur, so much so he eventually forgot Thomas existed, thinking of himself as a lone astronaut on a long journey to reach the stars. Years later Craig received an invitation to Thomas’ wedding, along with a short note thanking him for the confidence he gave him growing up. Although Craig was proud of him, he couldn’t bring himself to go to the wedding. He admits to being unfairly bitter at the time in his own self imposed exclusion. Where Thomas had felt alienated growing up, Craig purposefully alienated everyone else. Metaphorically making himself into an astronaut in an alien filled existence. The human realizes the irony of his situation now, as what he’d always asserted for himself came true in most literal way possible. He finds himself wishing he had went to Thomas’ wedding, knowing he missed the opportunity to see his childhood friend for the last time.

The astronaut jumps slightly at the sight of Tweek now standing in front of him, holding out his helmet and asking him a question.

“What was earth like?”

Craig groaned, “Man, I don’t want to talk about that right now.”

“Why?” Tweek replied, clueless to Craig’s discomfort with the topic. 

The human had to remind himself that the alien boy and his family still had no clue Earth had been destroyed, he didn’t know the pain speaking of the planet brought. Craig faked a yawn and took back his helmet.

“Oh, you’re tired? Okay, we’ll talk about it later.” The alien nodded in understanding before walking over to his bed and grabbing an armful of the fluff. Craig watched first in amusement and then absolute terror as Tweek began to pull the, seemingly sentient, pink bed until it split into two and pointed to the other bed proudly. “You’ll sleep here.”

“A-alright”, Craig approached the subtly shifting bed. “What the fuck is this thing?”

Tweek looked at him like he was crazy, “A bed?”

The human placed his hand on the fuzzy object and yelped as it immediately engulfed his hand. 

“Oooh, you don’t have stuff like this on earth?” Tweek asked rhetorically. He dug a hand into the original bed and pulled out a circular screen. He flicked around on it for a bit and then turned the screen to Craig, it displayed a reptilian looking man advertising a bed like Tweek’s.

“A-a-are you tired?” The man stuttered, scaly yellow skin spiking up as he stumbled on the word. “What are you tired of?” The screen flashed several images below the man, each seeming more alien than the last. “Are you tired of the moist feeling of Ca-a-anicuddles? Of the scratchy surface of Disdormants? Well be tired no more!”

“See look. Look Craig!” Tweek exclaimed, harshly elbowing the man’s side.

“I’m looking! Jesus.”

The alien man, who according to the flashing letters below was named Jimmy, turned to the fluffy be behind him and flopped down onto it, engulfing his entire body immediately. His head popped up after a moment of horrifying silence and he announced the name of the product. “I bring you GossGook! The universe’s most comfortable bed!” Jimmy briefly endorsed his new comedy tour and commercial ended. Craig looked to Tweek with raised eyebrows.

“What am I supposed to get from that?” 

“That it’s a bed, duh.” Tweek answered shrugging.

“Yeah. I mean, I believed you when you told me before.” 

Tweek raised his eyebrows back at him, “Really? You shouldn’t have.”

“That’s vague.” Craig scoffed. 

“I’m serious, the universe is a big place!” The alien grabbed Craig’s arm and looked him in the eyes. “You can’t trust ANYBODY! My dad said he once bought a new sign for our shop and when he brought it home it opened up and had a bunch of bugs in it!”

The human laughed and Tweek punched him. “Ow. So? Stuff like that happens sometimes.”

“Bugs, Craig! I could have told you a torture device was a bed and you wouldn’t know any better.”

“Yeah but I saw you lay on this bed a second ago? I knew it wasn’t like, deadly.”

Tweek paused at that, looking off to the side and slowly nodding. “I guess that makes sense, you’ve got good instincts man!” He patted Craig’s arm and jumped back onto his own bed.

“Thanks, they don’t called me Clairvoyant Craig for nothing. I can tell the authenticity of what people say almost just by looking at them.” Craig lied.

“No way. People really called you that? Who called you that?” The alien looked doubtful. Red picked up on this and added to Craig’s deception.

“Yeah he totally can, I’ve seen him do it.”

“That’s not true because I lied about cleaning my room earlier and you were none the wiser!” Tweek stated proudly, though he probably shouldn’t have been.

“I didn’t say anything, how would you know I didn’t know?”

Tweek deflated at that, “Yeah I guess. I still don’t know you that well, you could be anything you say you are.” The alien’s eyes lit up suddenly. “Let’s play a game! We should get to know eachother better.”

Craig sighed overdramatically, though he really didn’t mind playing a game. He wanted to get to know Tweek a lot more than he’d care to admit. “Sure, what game?”

“21-no. 42 questions?” Tweek replied, looking away when Craig laughed at him for doubling the typical amount of questions the game offered. 

“Alright but no questions about Earth, okay?”

“Fine, fine. First question?” 

“Shoot.”

“Okay. Uh, what type of metal is your ship made out of?” Tweek asked. He hadn’t recognised the material after sneaking over to it earlier when Craig was talking to his parents but he figured he shouldn’t bring that part up.

“I have no clue, titanium maybe?”

“It didn’t feel like titanium though.”

“What?”

“N-next question!” Tweek stammered. 

Craig lowered his brows at the alien but decided to drop it, it wasn’t like he cared that much if Tweek was out touching his ship at some point. “Where do your parents get the coffee for their shop? I thought it was an earth-only thing?”

“Oh it’s not really coffee, my dad says the plant is pretty similar to what they have on earth energy-wise but it tastes really bad. My parents put this addictive drug in it so people will drink it anyway.” The alien shrugged off the fact his parents drug their customers way too easy and Craig thought back to the commercial that had been sent up to his ship. ‘#1 most addictive coffee in the universe’ is probably not an understatement. “That’s how they stay in business, this rock floats all around the galaxy and gets people addicted and then they travel all over the galaxy looking for us to get more. It’s immoral sure but they do pretty good business for it.”

Craig couldn’t argue with that. “Okay, your turn.”

“What’s the material of your space suit made of?”

“I don’t know dude, mostly Nylon I think.”

Tweek nods, “Yeah, I thought so.”

“Then why did you ask?”

“Is that your next question?”

Craig groans. “NO. Uh, how were you born? Is interspecies breeding pretty normal here?”

“Nah it’s not all that common, hardly any species are compatible enough to go through with reproduction without serious birth defects. My parents hired this famous doctor guy to see if he could create a baby with their DNA safely and it worked out relatively well I think.” Tweek looked down at his green hands and shrugged. “But it was really experimental, the doctor couldn’t recreate it so my parents can’t have another kid. I am forever an only child.”

“I think it sounds pretty cool to be an only child forever. I was 10 when my little sister was born and it was hell. I was so used to being alone and the center of attention and then BOOM! This little red-head baby shows up and takes it all away.” Craig snickers light-heartedly, he hated his sister until her fourth birthday when she threw cake at his bitchiest uncle and he never came back again. He still remembered holding her little hand after, calling her ‘Trisha the Troublemaker’ and saying how much he loved her. “Maybe not though, it's always good to have someone who has your back.”

“I wish”, Tweek sighed. “My parents never listen to anything I say. If I had a sibling they could back me up at least.”

“I can help you with that maybe”, Craig offered. He looked away shyly at the alien’s questioning look. “I mean, I don’t really have anyone anymore now that my family is- on Earth and- Uh. You seem cool.”

For a moment Craig thinks Tweek saw right through him, saw the truth about Earth and the lack of survivors but if he did he doesn’t say anything. The alien just smiles and pats the bed next to his. “It’s getting late, we should continue this in the morning.”  
Craig eyes the bed warily but sits down anyway, hesitantly welcoming it’s embrace. After a moment he finds it is indeed comfier than any other bed he has ever had, warmer too. He yawns for real this time and Tweek turns the lights off somehow. Craig notices for the first time how beautiful the stars look through Tweek’s transparent ceiling and chuckles when he spots fake neon stars dotting the roof alongside them.

“What number were we on?” The human mumbles tiredly.

“I don’t know, I guess we’ll have to start over.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Craig's ship is made of titanium btw, he doesn't know his ship very well lol  
> Jimmy will likely meet Tweek and Craig way later into the story but right now he is a celebrity comedian with a lot of influence over media in the galaxy, which means you'll likely see him again in commercials and TV Craig and Tweek come across throughout the story.  
> Next chapter Craig will explain what happened to earth and (hopefully) Token will make an appearance.


	7. Black Diamond and New Possiblities

When Craig wakes up he feels refreshed and elated. Without the hybropills sleep regained the comfortable emptiness it had always held for him where hybropills turned sleep into an endless cycle of groggy semi-awakeness and self aware dreams. He had thought it would take him awhile to get used to the Tweak’s family residence, fearing it would hold the same awkwardness that staying with indifferent family members or any kind but unknown strangers would but somehow waking up in an alien bed, in an alien house, with alien people makes him feel more at home than he had in all the years since he left.

Craig jumped out of bed and, upon seeing Tweek still asleep in the bed next to him, goes to seek out the half alien’s parents. Maybe it was his starvation for company that influences his sudden urge to fit in with the Tweak family, or perhaps it was to put off the inevitable heartbreak of retelling the story of earth’s destruction, either way he set about doing as much chores for the family as they would allow.

Invigorated by his spike of good spirits and energy, he happily mopped the floor of the coffee shop and greeted customers, of which there was a surprisingly hefty flow throughout the rock’s steady travel through space. Though they would often leave as quickly as they came, Craig did his best to display the air of professional but impersonal politeness he had learned from watching his mother’s holographic advertisement back on Earth. Meanwhile Mr. Tweak prepared the shop’s coffee from the “secret” basement of the Tweak’s shop hidden behind the counter. Upon asking about the benefits of hiding the creation of the beverages, Richard vaguely replied:

“Our customers tend to get a bit… desperate when waiting for their coffee. It’s best not to leave the ingredients where they can see them.”

Craig nodded uncomfortably, suddenly noticing the erratic behaviors of the customers and realizing why they came and left so quickly, often chanting variations of “Need my fix”, “I’ll quit next time”, and “I have to stop doing this”.

“Hey uh- Sir?” 

“Richard, son.” Mr. Tweak corrected, peeking his head out of the basement hatch in the floor.

“Richard.” Craig repeated, tensing as he watched two more customers land in the parking lot. When Tweek had mentioned his parents drugging their coffee the other night, Craig hadn’t realized just how bad the addictive qualities were. There was a difference between light craving inducing addiction and life ending addiction, and considering how worn out and miserable the customers looked, it was obvious which Tweak’s coffee was and Craig couldn’t stand being involved in the immoral process so closely. “Is there anything else I can do?”

Richard laughs. “Tired of customer service? No worries, Tweek can’t stand it either. You don’t have to work at all you know? You are our guest. Oh! Didn’t you have something to tell me? About Earth?” 

Craig shakes his head, “No! I mean- yeah. But uh- it’d be better to tell it when the rest of your family’s here to hear it. Until then I’m still fine to do work, just something more- physical? I have a lot of pent of energy from the trip here.” He half-lied, more desperate to leave as the new customers entered the shop, but not enough to dive into that particular tale just yet.

“Oh, well that’s alright. A strong worker is always helpful around the business!” Mr. Tweak chucked. “We’re getting a new shipment of beans in an hour, you can help Tweek unload it into the basement. In the meantime, go wake my son up will you? He tends to stay awake all his sleeping hours building and pass out come time for his shift, such a disorderly boy that one is.”

Craig nods, escaping the counter as Mr. Tweak rose to take the customers orders. His spirits lifted as Tweek waved at him from his transparent room on the way over, awake though still stubbornly in bed. The astronaut couldn’t help but wonder what Tweek had spent all night building, he could have sworn the half alien had gone to sleep at the same time as him but Craig had been known to be a heavy sleeper back on earth, Tweek could have been using a jackhammer by his sleeping form and not woken him up.

Upon entering the sliding doors of the Tweak home he is immediately bombarded an unusual but not repulsive smell. Mrs. Tweak calls him into, what he learned from his tour yesterday to be, the Tweak’s impressively futuristic kitchen. The complicated machinery around the room seemed to be more fitting for a chemical lab then a culinary workplace. In fact, at the moment Mrs. Tweak was working with what for all intents and purposes could be nothing more than scientific beakers, pouring their contents into a clear pot that was the source of what Craig had smelled.

“One moment dear, I have a small gift for you.” Mrs. Tweak poured half of a yellow beaker into the concoction causing the contents to boil until hardening into a pink blob. The alien woman flipped the pot upside down and her creation slid out with a slick plop. She cut a slice and distributed it onto a plate for him. “Here you go!”

Craig grabs the plate apprehensively. “Thanks, what is it?”

“Strawberry cake? My husband said they had this item on earth,” She replies disappointed at first then a look of understanding flashed on her face. “Oh but of course this isn’t a kind you’ve had before.” She laughs easily and explains, “Earth recipes are hard to recreate without earthly ingredients, I had to take a few creative liberties with this one but Richard tells me it tastes the same- though the textures a bit off.” 

“Oh- Uh cool.” Smelling the creation up close he found it smelled nothing like strawberry, though still sweet, it smelled more like flowery air freshener than anything else. He didn’t doubt Mr. Tweak’s judgement on the taste but he was apprehensive to try it himself due to the other “creative liberties” the Tweak’s used in their Earth recreations.

Just as he was about to make an excuse as to why he couldn’t try it Tweek popped into the room, grabbing the plate from his hands and spearing a large piece of cake on a fork-like object before eating it. The half alien winked at Craig and the human realized Tweek was trying to show him the food was safe. He accepted a new plate and utensil from Tweek’s now exasperated mother and took in a mouth full. 

“Uh- yum!” Craig faked, it turned out Mr. Tweak’s judgement was off. While the cake wasn’t necessarily horrible it was far from what it was intended to be, the thick gelatinous texture mixed with an overly sugary flavor left the concoction hard for Craig to swallow in many ways and was hardly better than the nutritional squeeze bottles back on his ship.

“Oh, I’m so glad you like it! Here you can have the rest!” Mrs. Tweak continued, oblivious.

Luckily for Craig, Tweek seemed to like the cake much more, grabbing the entirety of it and leaving with it to his room.

“Tweek share that!” Mrs. Tweak yelled after him, the half alien responding with a ‘yeah, yeah’ before disappearing into his destination. His mother shook her head disapprovingly but turned to Craig smiling anyway. “You should follow him, he’s been asking me where you went off to and when you were coming back every few minutes since he woke up. I think he has something to show you.”

Craig smiles back and tails Tweek, upon entering the room he is nearly tripped by a fast moving object close to the floor. 

“Tada!” Tweek announced, followed by a lower volume “Tada” from the moving item.

Craig laughs when realizing the item was Red, or Red’s mobile screen, attached to a small platform and some wheels. 

“Craig look, I’m that show you like.” Red announced, speeding up as it lapped around the room. “Red racer.” 

Laughing harder, the human carefully steps over Red’s race course and over to Tweek. “Was this what you were working on all last night? Gotta say, it’s really cool. I’m sure Red appreciates this a lot.” The robot in question changes its course to ram into Craig’s leg, not appreciating being talked for. “Ow!”

“All night?” Tweek looked nervous, “Did I keep you up?”

“Oh nah, your Dad told me. I slept like a baby.” 

Tweek let a sigh of relief, “That’s good! And no, building this only took an hour or two.” He turned and picked up a glue gun like object off his desk, the same as he had been using the day before, and holding it out to Craig. “I spent most of the night putting the finishing touches on this.”

Craig grabbed it, confused. He had assumed the gun-like object was just an everyday tool and upon closer examination nothing about it betrayed that notion. It was sleek and maroon in color, void of any distinguishing features other than a clear yellow stick sticking out of a hole at the top and a trigger located near the handle. “What does it do?”

“Here, I’ll show you!” Tweek grabbed the gun back excitedly. He began setting up three objects on his desk, two cans and a wilted plant of some kind. Aiming the gun at the first can and pulling the trigger, a yellow beam shot out and melted the can on contact. Tweek then took out the yellow stick at the top and replaced it with a red one, when shot at the second can it disintegrated it. Finally, he placed a green stick within the gun and when shot at the plant it began to unwilt, looking much healthier than the moment before. Craig noticed each stick looked slightly shorter when removed and figured it’s mechanism must actually work somewhat like a hot glue gun.

“Crap that’s cool!” Craig reached to take the gun back. “Can I try?”

Tweek held the gun at a distance. “Can you aim?”

“Yes.” Craig answered confidently.

“No.” Red interrupted, “Don’t give it to him, he’s bad at everything.”

“No way, I was top of my class at UAOOH!” Craig replied, reaching for the gun again.

“What’s OOOOH?”

Craig deflated. “It was uh- It is where I learned to be an astronaut.” 

“On Earth?” Tweek looked excited, “What was it like?”

“Um-” They were interrupted by a loud blast as a large ship landed in the parking lot of Tweek’s coffee. 

“Oh crap, the deliveries are here!” Tweek rushed out of his room as Craig mentally rejoiced at successfully avoiding a difficult topic.

“When are you gonna tell them exactly?” Red asked from the floor, Craig picked it up and sighed.

“Next time they are all in the same room. I promise.”

Following Tweek outside, Craig was surprised to see another alien alongside him. The alien man was tall, maybe only a few inches shorter than himself, with sparkling dark purple skin and black but oddly translucent coiling hair shaped into a spike on his head. 

Upon spotting him, the man turned and gave him a politician’s smile. “Well, well. So nice to see a new face among my clients! I’m Token, Token Black.” Apparently the smile had a politician’s voice to match.

Tweek shook his head. “Nah Token this is Craig, the one I just told you about. He’s from Earth! And don’t worry he’s cool.” 

Token relaxed, his voice rising an octave like he had been putting on an act before. “Thank god!” He turned to Craig, “Forgive me for the business talk dude, my dad has been making me do it all the time to show people I’m ‘professional’ or something.” Ruffling Tweek’s hair he finishes, “Life’s hard as the son of a business owner. Anyway let's get this all unloaded.” 

Tweek hunkered down and brushed off a keypad hidden on the ground next to him, after entering in the code the floor opened up revealing stairs descending into darkness. Token taps Craig on the shoulder and leads him into his own ship.

“I’m not sure how things operate back on earth but pretty much all you gotta do here is-” Token presses a button on the side of one of many of the boxes piled in his ship causing it to float, he grabs it begins to pull it out of the door. “Grab a few of these and lead them into the Tweak’s basement. Keep a good grip though, they’ll float away otherwise.”

Craig nods and follows his lead, asking questions as he follows him into the dark basement. “What business does your dad run?”

“Oh boy, I have trouble even keeping track, he has a lot of different businesses. Ever heard of ‘Black Diamonds’? That’s his business name, pretty much everything under that name is his.” Token answers, casually pressing the button on his box again and letting it drop onto the floor.

Craig follows suit, “Nah, I haven’t really gotten the chance to look around much since- Uh my trip here.”  
“Oh, wow! You’ve got a big universe ahead of you then!” Token continues up to his ship once more, “I recommend visiting my planet first, it’s beautiful this time of year. it’s actually pretty close to earth I think. Only a couple thousand light years, I’m surprised you didn’t see it on your way here.”

“Heh yeah.” Craig said nervously, remembering the third of the planets Red woke him up to see on his way here was occupied by glittering beings much like Token. “Surprising.”

Upon exiting the basement Tweek blocks them, holding up a finger while he fiddles with a metal box in his hand. “Okay it’s ready now, watch this!” Tweek presses a button on the box and a electronic beeping ensues, he adjusts the joystick and suddenly the boxes from within Token’s ship float out in a single line into the basement. “I’ve been working on this for awhile, since you always say unloading takes too long.”

“Holy crap!” Token looks overjoyed, looking over Tweek’s shoulder at the controls. “How does it work?” 

“It works similarly to the universal translator I built for the shop, it sends out an electronic signal to whatever machines in the area hold the code I typed in here-” Tweek points to a small screen on the box. “In which I entered the code used to activate the boxes floating mechanism, and with that I can control them with this joystick and move them where they are need to be.”

“Tweek, my dad would pay loads for this! You gotta sell it to us!” Token shakes the half alien’s shoulder excitedly but Tweek shakes his head no. “What? Why? Come on man, you could use the money to get out of here like you’ve always wanted! Hell we’d even give you a steady job, god knows your inventions are worth it.”

Tweek looks over to his parents shop sadly and shrugs, “I can’t, yet. Maybe in another few years.”

Token shakes his head but smiles at Tweek regardless, “Whatever dude, I’ll brief my dad on your invention anyway. I’m sure he’ll send over some representatives to try and convince you.”

Tweek grins at him and punches his arm, announcing the boxes are all unloaded. Token leaves shortly after, first giving Craig the coordinates for his planet and telling him he’s always welcome.

Craig asks Red to save the coordinates for a later date, Tweek taking notice.

“Are you gonna leave, Craig?” 

“Huh? I guess eventually. Can’t stay here forever.” The human says gracelessly, stuttering when he sees a disappointed look on Tweek’s face. “I mean uh- It won’t be for awhile, I promise. Other than me, you and your dad are the last humans left after all-”

“What?” Tweek’s eyes widen. “What do you mean?”

“Crap- Uh.”

“What happened to the rest?” 

“Listen.”

“What about Earth?”

Craig sighs, “Okay, I’ll explain everything but- Go get your Mom and Dad first, I don’t want to do this more than once.”

As Tweek runs off to do just that, Craig groans into his hands. 

“Smooth.” Says Red.

“Shut up.”

After breaking the news to the Tweak’s about the death of the human race and earth, the family surprisingly kept about their lives like normal. Besides walking in on a somber conversation between Mr. and Mrs. Tweak about lost family and Tweek’s initial disappointment of not getting to ever visit the origin of half his family, Craig could see the family handled the loss much better than he himself had. 

That being said, he was still surprised when Mr. Tweak offered him a job as if it was no big deal.

“My wife and I have thought this over quite a bit and- Well son, we want to make you part of the family!” Richard was oddly sincere as he continued, “We’ve both lost loved ones Craig, while I’m lucky enough to have some left you’ve got none and I’d like to help you out, give you a place to call home and source of income. What do you say?”

While Craig appreciated the thought he was hesitant to accept the offer due to the nature of the Tweek business. Richard, noticing his hesitancy, laughed and continued, “Don’t worry, I know you’re not a customer service man. I figured since you’ve got a ship already you could do mostly outside work.”

“Outside work?”

“Yup! You know, pick us up supplies and advertise. It’ll be pretty free reign, I promise. I want to give you an opportunity to explore alongside doing some work, we’ll just call you when we need you back.” Richard finished, patting Craig shoulder. 

Craig in no way wanted to be back out in space alone again but thought maybe he could strike a deal that could benefit more than just him.

“Can I bring Tweek?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, sorry I took a break but I'm gonna try to get back to updating regularly again soon.  
> Craig found a loophole in Tweek's issue with his parents, he gets to explore the galaxy like he wants while still technically working for them.  
> Next chapter will be their first mission.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey this is my first fan fiction so I'm not sure how often I'll be able to update, though I'm aiming for a new chapter every month. The first two chapters are backstory for the most part but after that we get into the adventure pretty quickly. The story is all planned through I just have to get the motivation to write it but I do plan on making art for this later on because the alien designs of the characters can pretty extravagant and I feel like that will help the viewers visualize everything. Please give me feed back, I'm very new to writing and I'm not always confident in my abilities so positive and negative reinforcement would both be very appreciated.


End file.
